Overdosing On Homeopathy Pills

In a recent protest against the pseudo-scientific claptrap of the homeopathic industry, UK sceptics 'overdosed' on homeopathy pills outside Boots, a large commercial drug store who recently began selling homeopathy pills. The group wanted to demonstrate that these pills, which are simply made of water, are as harmless as they are useful.

In the UK, the NHS operates a number of homeopathic clinics, paid for and maintained by the taxpayer. There is even a Royal London Homeopathic Hospital as part of the University College London Hospitals NHS trust. University College London is a world leading university (ranked 4th in the world by THE-QS World University Rankings).

In the face of such government-funded illogic it is easy to lose heart. The taxpayer may as well be funding mystics with healing crystals who harness the positive energy (such an overused word with meaningless prefixes helplessly attached) of the spirits to heal your inner spirit guide. That’s why it’s lovely to see a group of devoted sceptics out on what looks to be a rather chilly morning, with minimal media attention, pointing out the utter stupidity of such illogic. This video shows one such group and their noble efforts. One man says, reading from the pill box “Maximum of twenty in a day – and I’ve just had eighty-four!” Enjoy.



Do remember that before putting anything in your mouth, check out what it is. You can OD on water.

Hat tip to Humanist Life for this story. If you want to know why homeopathy is harmless, read this article from Simon Singh.

Edgar Allan Poe Should've Read Carl Sagan

Throughout the ages, it seems as if poets, writers and those of any artistic temperament have seen science as the enemy of the creative process. Science has been, and still is, viewed as reductionist and therefore unable to posses beauty. A prime example of this is Edgar Allan Poe’s Sonnet: To Science (emphasis mine) -

Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art!
Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.
Why preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart,
Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?
How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise?
Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering
To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies,
Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing?
Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car?
And driven the Hamadryad from the wood
To seek a shelter in some happier star?
Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood,
The Elfin from the green grass, and from me
The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?

For the sake of a brief note on taste and my less than authoritative poetic judgement, I don’t think this is Poe at his best anyway. The Raven, stereotypically, is my top Poe poem. But let’s focus on the phrase “dull realities” that the “vulture” of science lays bare. What does Poe mean here? It seems that he believes by removing the veils of ignorance from cosmic mystery, we dampen the universes’ aesthetic qualities. Knowing that a star is a burning ball of light elements means something is missing when we lie down and stare at those pinpricks of light on a cloudless night.

Nonsense. Absolute nonsense. Knowing how something works not only takes nothing away from its immediate qualities of beauty, but it adds, not subtracts, mystery and awe. An interesting question arises regarding the nature of reality in this context though – is any reality beautiful by definition? In other words, if this world was different, would we still be saying its scientific mechanisms were beautiful simply because it happens to be that they are the case?

I would answer this question with a tentative yes. Any reality that can produce creatures capable of asking the question ‘is this beautiful?’ must be marvellous. But in our own particular universe, we do find unique beauty. A peek through the Hubble telescope far surpasses anything written by Poe. Of course, poetry can be equally or more beautiful than science, since it reveals the complex nature of what it means to be human. A poem, essentially, will always be about humanity because it is inescapably written with perspective. But Grand Indifference, a phrase I’ve used before, can only be achieved with science.

Bertrand Russell likened the beauty of mathematics to that of sculpture:

Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty — a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show. The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as poetry.

Although this may seem a little dated to modern ears, it expresses the kind of sentiments shared by many scientists and mathematicians. But, of course, (and I bet you saw it coming), feelings of this kind have, in my view, always been expressed most eloquently by the late Carl Sagan. In his epic Cosmos he writes:

The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be. Our feeblest contemplations of the Cosmos stir us — there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation of a distant memory, as if we were falling from a great height. We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries.

The greatest of mysteries indeed. To those who say science is nothing but “dull realities”, why not take a look at what’s out there? If you’re still unimpressed, then Poe certainly isn’t going to offer anything better...

The Problem Of Evil - An Invitation

Christopher Hitchens has been on form recently, writing about the religious response to the disaster in Haiti in Slate. Hitchens writes:

As so often, the first priest out of the trap on this occasion was that evil moron Pat Robertson, who announced on the Christian Broadcasting Network that Haitians had long ago made an agreement with Satan to enlist diabolic help against French imperialism. The implication was clear ... for this offense, God would kill underfed Haitian babies in slums 200 years later. (He would also kill the Archbishop of Port-au-Prince, Joseph Serge Miot, and bring his cathedral down on his head, though since Pat Robertson doesn't really think that Catholics are proper Christians, there's perhaps scant irony there.)

It is of course unfair to lump all believers in this category. Only the most farcical examples are liable to such scorn. However, all believers must ask themselves why God would allow such a thing to happen. Evil is broadly defined in terms of moral and natural causes. It is the latter that has resulted and continues to cause so many problems for religious apologists.

As Bertrand Russell pointed out (see post on original sin) in order for someone to say that innocent children deserve the suffering they experience as a result of events such as these, they must become as cruel as the God in whom they believe. Those too, who assert that evil events of this magnitude occur in order that we may develop, simply fail to grasp the enormous moral wickedness required to assert such a thing.

I am yet to encounter an adequate solution to this problem. Therefore, I invite any religious person under 21 to send in a submission to youngfreethought@gmail.com that adequately addresses the problem of natural evil. Afterwards, I shall invite responses from our regular readers to this post.

Please don’t forget to donate to Non-Believers Giving Aid to help those in Haiti.

Original Sin – The Original Sin

The conception of Sin which is bound up with Christian ethics is one that does an extraordinary amount of harm, since it affords people an outlet for their sadism which they believe to be legitimate, even noble.

Bertrand Russell’s words (Why I am not a Christian) are apt to describe the worst species of the idea of ‘Sin’. Its creation can be found in the ramblings of the once raucous party boy of theology – ‘St.’ Augustine. The story goes that he was sitting in a Milanese garden, whereupon he heard children chanting the phrase ‘tolle lege’ – ‘take it and read’. At this climacteric moment in his life, Augustine picked up the Epistles of Paul (Romans 13: 13-14) and read these words: ‘Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexually immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealously. Rather clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh.’ Thus was born original sin.

Humanity, Augustine would have you believe, were blessed with a perfect uncorrupted world. Then came the Fall. A snake began talking and encouraging Eve to commit the worst crime possible – scrumping. And she did it of her own volition. But this contemptible fairy tale has led to inordinate damage. The kind of damage it would be facetious to trivialise. This sin, many believe, is inherited by each and every human being. It is passed down through sexual intercourse from generation to generation. Those born in destitution, rancid poverty and misery, those subjected to tortures from birth, disease, famine and war face deserve no sympathy for these injustices because they were, like the rest of us, born in sin.

Once more, Bertrand Russell put most eloquently and soberly the abhorrent nature of such a doctrine:

I would invite any Christian to accompany me to the children’s ward of a hospital, to watch the suffering that is there being endured, and then to persist in the assertion that those children are so morally abandoned as to deserve what they are suffering. In order to bring himself to say this, a man must destroy himself in all feelings of mercy and compassion. He must, in short, make himself as cruel as the God in whom he believes. No man who believes that all is for the best in this suffering world can keep his ethical values unimpaired, since he is always having to find excuses for pain and misery.

It would have been bad enough for Augustine to have left his appalling idea at this. Unfortunately, he had a scholarly spat which threw him even further into the abyss that was already staring back into him. The British monk Pelagius, as Diarmaid MacCulloch describes in his excellent work A History of Christianity, has often been viewed as offering a nicer alternative to the starkness of Augustinian theology. Not so. Pelagius’ ideal world was ‘one vast monastery’. In his view, God demands high moral standards that we must obey of our own freewill. Nonetheless, what repulsed Pelagius about Augustine’s view was that it provided ‘false excuse for Christians passively to avoid making any moral effort’.

In Augustine’s work City of God, there are tracts attacking Pelagius’ thought. Augustine responds by asserting that our utterly corrupt nature entails that God’s decisions about who to save and who to condemn to hellfire are entirely arbitrary. Since God’s decisions are transcendent of time, salvation is predestined. The Fall was such a serious crime that it can provide justification for to condemn all humankind to the will of a celestial dictator. The worth of humanity to Augustine, if not already apparent, becomes so when you discover the word he used to describe it: massa – ‘lump’. Like a cancerous tumour, humanity is an unwelcome stain on God’s otherwise perfect universe.

Christianity of this guise filters through into the modern day. Most of all, Christianity is a religion of guilt. One where you are created evil and commanded to do good. If atheists need feel anything to Christians of this temperament, it is pity. The invisible hand of Augustine permeates the Christian conscience to remind each believer that they are worthless every time they begin to feel the onset of the faintest joy or happiness. In any form, nihilism is not only false, but dangerous. This is the equivalent of theistic nihilism.

Merely A Denier?

This article comes from Chanchal Krishna. Chanchal is a 20 year old engineering student from India. In this article, he discusses the common misconception that atheists are 'deniers' of God.

Who is an atheist? I often find that the dictionary definition comes to something like ‘one who denies the existence of God or gods’. Being a person who calls myself an atheist I find that definition or label too narrow. Anti-Christ’s, Satan worshippers etc can be called deniers of god. Would that make them atheists? I don’t think so.

Denying God, in this context implies “to refuse to believe; reject”. Which means that an atheist is someone who denies or rejects god. The problem is, if there were gods or if at least there was the bare minimum of evidence to support the existence of gods: most atheists would gladly accept that fact. So we atheists simply do not go around saying or rejecting something that exist just for the heck of it. An atheist doesn’t believe in God because there’s no proof or evidence to support His existence.

Let’s look at it by way of an example. Let’s just for the moment say there is life on mars. Alien creatures are spotted and all the evidence is there to support this. Now in such a case a person who goes around saying there’s no life on mars can rightly be called a denier. But, in reality, as far as our current exploration reveals, there’s no evidence to suggest there is life on mars (for those who care only to argue, there is at least no complex life form we know of). Now say, there are people who believe there is life on mars and people who don’t believe it as there’s no evidence. Who’d be the deniers here? Of course those who believe life is there, because they are simply denying the mountain of evidence merely to satisfy their desire to believe. The case is similar with atheists; we 'don’t believe' because evidence dictates that this is reasonable, not because we hate god or not because of a deep seated desire to deny His existence.

So it’s an error to call us simply ‘deniers’. Consider the case of Malayalam language – my mother tongue. In Malayalam, ‘atheist’ is translated as nireswara vadhi, which literally means one who argues or denies god. That’s not what I am; a mere denier, and labelling us as mere deniers does not do justice to the word ‘atheist’. That’s why I’m forced to write about this topic.

So who’s really an atheist? An atheist is a rational being with a world view based on true science and an understanding of nature. An atheist relies on his or her reason and common sense as a guide for their beliefs and actions. An atheist is a realist who prefers to accept truth as it is, however inconvenient it may be. An atheist is a sceptic with a curious mind, who’s longing to understand not believe. If this common misconception can be changed we will have advanced some way to improving the status 'atheism' worldwide.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Young Freethought's editors.

The Last Man Who Knew Everything

Thomas Young (1773-1829) was a man from a by-gone age. The last da Vinci, the extent of his knowledge and scale of achievement will perhaps never be matched. The subtitle to Andrew Robinson’s book from which this post borrows it’s title is Thomas Young, The Anonymous Polymath Who Provided Newton Wrong, Explained How We See, Cured the Sick, and Deciphered the Rosetta Stone, Among Other Feats of Genius. Readers of this blog might be interested to know Simon Singh describes (as does his wikipedia article) that, at the tender age of 14, Young was fluent in Latin and Greek and knew his way around French, Italian, Hebrew, German, Chaldean, Syriac, Samaritan, Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Amharic.

The conditions required for genius are diverse, there isn’t a formula, but there usually are subtle reasons. Young was distant from his Quaker parents and a keen autodidact – he believed that the need for a tutor was purely the result of a lack of self-discipline. He said of himself that he was born old and died young.

To those of us who recognize the importance of youth in shaping your own future and who desire to be informed human beings, the thought often occurs of men such as Young. To what extent should they be mimicked, copied and imitated? Upon reading of the lone, self-taught polymath, should we swiftly lock ourselves up in voluntary confinement? This is neither likely, nor wise. Genius probably can be developed and honed, but the decision should not be prescriptive. Besides, none of us really have any hope of achieving a fraction of what Young managed in his 55 years on planet Earth. Tentative talent too, rarely morphs into success later on. But, said Isaac Asimov of Young... "He was the best kind of infant prodigy, the kind that matures into an adult prodigy”.

I hope there are young readers of this blog who will achieve something like one of Young’s multitude of accolades – I also think it likely. Future scientists, authors, speakers and keen amateurs all can learn something from the early life of this admirable truth-seeker. An innocence; that all knowledge is attainable and worth attaining, should not be lost entirely with age. Young Freethinkers – let’s do our best to keep this freedom.

Creation - A Film About Darwin The Man

Fundamental disagreements about the nature of existence, and love, are not often compatible. Love is not transcendent, and it must cope with practical, moral and philosophical (in the broadest sense of the term) disagreements. In a letter to Darwin from his wife Emma, she presents her worries about her husband’s increasing doubt. Her fears were undoubtedly those of a sincere and loving wife; one that wanted to see her husband in the afterlife. Famously, Darwin wrote at the bottom of that letter “When I am dead, know that many times, I have kissed and cried over this.”

This extremely personal (now public) side of Darwin is the focus of a new film entitled Creation. Young Freethought was invited, along with several other bloggers, to an online chat with director Jon Amiel. During the course of the film, Amiel said of Darwin that he had “grown to love him”. The film is largely sympathetic to a man it portrays as a sometimes distant but always loving father.

Darwin saw the cause of the fear his wife possessed about his place in the ‘hereafter’ as “a damnable doctrine”. Darwin’s unique understanding of the acerbic viciousness of “nature red in tooth and claw” naturally led him to doubt the benevolence of any supposed creator. But he needed not have sought evil in nature, for Darwin’s Victorian life was scattered with corpses. After the death of what was affectionately his ‘favourite’ child Annie from Scarlet Fever aged 10, he wrote "We have lost the joy of the household, and the solace of our old age”.

In 2000, Darwin’s descendent Randal Keynes published Annie’s Box. A book based on a collection of memories Charles and Emma kept of their beloved daughter that Keynes stumbled across (what a find!). Scriptwriter for Creation John Collee would use this book as a source for the film. Annie is a somewhat ominous figure throughout Creation, returning as a manifestation of Darwin’s fears and sorrow. A blur between fact and fiction is a recurring feature fans of Darwin will notice. Though such liberties are mostly executed with care and tenderness, some fictitious signposts provided by the film seem quite unnecessary.

To anyone familiar with Socratic humility, reading The Origin of Species is like discovering Socrates’ great lost work. Darwin goes to extraordinary pains to explain the weaknesses of his theory. And though Amiel was quite right in stating it is “a difficult book to plough through”, in it, Darwin embodies the scientific ideal of dispassionate pursuit of knowledge, whilst retaining his humanity and gentle nature. It seems to me that Darwin was undoubtedly a complete English toff (though Amiel disagrees), but without caricaturing the man, he can safely be said to have been a loveable one. Creation is a worthwhile endeavour, executed well. Its subject matter is universal and touching, always compensating for one or two weak points. Amiel certainly seemed to possess a deep solidarity with Darwin’s ghost and others too, will see why after watching this film.

Creation is out on DVD in the UK and is released in American cinemas on Friday.

Don’t forget, the question of the success of 2009 as Darwin’s year is still a suggested topic for submissions!

Non-Believers Giving Aid - Haiti Earthquake

A short post about the recent disaster in Haiti. As a non-believer, you may want to ensure your money does not end up supporting any form of proselytizing or conditional aid. As such, we felt that we should make you aware of the RDFRS’s and other freethinking associations’ attempts at providing secular aid to the people of Haiti – Non-Believers Giving Aid. The RDFRS website states:

Clearly the immediate need is for the suffering people of Haiti, and all the money raised by this current appeal will go to that cause, but the new account will remain available for future emergencies too. There are, of course, many ways for you to donate to relief organizations already, but doing it through Non-Believers Giving Aid offers some advantages:

1. 100% of your donation will be go to these charities: not even the PayPal fees will be deducted from your donation, since Richard will personally donate a sum to cover the cost of these (capped at $10,000). This means that more of your money will reach the people in need.

2. When donating via Non-Believers Giving Aid, you are helping to counter the scandalous myth that only the religious care about their fellow-humans.

If you can, please give generously. Do not, however, feel we are commanding you to do so. All we hope is to make you aware of a non-religious way of supporting the relief effort. Our sympathies are with those affected by this disaster.

How Should Freethought Proceed? More Thoughts...

We’ve had many articles considering the best way to dampen the fervour and spread of religious belief. John Kubinski (18), a regular writer for Young Freethought, wades in once more with this excellent essay. In it, he argues that religion is best understood as a moral intuition with evolutionary roots, rather than as a poor attempt at philosophy and empirical inquiry. He argues this insight into the nature of religious belief might be helpful in thinking about the best strategies for dismantling religion.

The first step in addressing any problem is coming to understand the nature of the problem. Freethinkers can mostly agree that religion is irrational, but what is the nature of this irrationality? Often times, I see freethinkers treating religion as what is essentially a philosophy - and they accordingly hold it up to standards of logical rigor and academic competence. While this perspective is helpful in highlighting the illogical and absurd features of religions, it completely misses the mark in the way of offering an accurate explanation of religion. Religion as philosophy is a terrible model for understanding the phenomenon that we are trying to combat. When someone makes a ludicrous religious claim, it’s nothing like stating a conclusion that doesn’t follow from the given premises. Say you showed someone an apple and dropped it ten times in a row, and it fell to the floor each time. If the spectator responds to this observation by saying that apples rise rather than fall when dropped, that would be irrational - because the evidence suggests otherwise. Now, is religion anything like that? I think few would venture to answer yes to that question. Religious irrationality is of a fundamentally different kind than that. Religion is not merely bad philosophy. Religion must be understood as an outgrowth of evolved features of human psychology, and a product of what is in all likelihood the co-evolution of memes and genes. The capacity for religiosity exists in all of us, and is not just the result of poor reasoning, but a human universal that has been a defining feature of our nature for nearly as long as we have existed. Religion comes to us not through reason, but through intuition. And our intuitions are just a set of evolved faculties that come pre-installed in all of our brains.

While I think memetics can offer a valuable approach, I find myself parting ways with some who view it as a full and satisfactory explanation of religion. Memes don’t exist in a vacuum, they modify our intuitions and help give shape to the milieu of human psychology which has its basic features already outlined by genes. This is why I think it can be instructive to think of religion more like tribalism than say…flat earth theory. To continue to use the language of memes, one could say that American (or British, or French, or Chinese, etc.) nationalism is a meme. But it would be highly (and I would say perhaps dangerously) erroneous to conclude that belief in the superiority of the group one belongs to is merely a meme. While the specific flavour of tribalism is memetic, the capacity for tribalism is innate and universal in human beings. In the same way that tribal loyalty is internalized at a very young age, religion is seamlessly absorbed by the youth in a society. The sheer utility of tribalism in organizing human beings in mutually beneficial ways was all that was required for natural selection to favour the evolution of tribalistic beliefs, even if they didn’t match up with reality. Evolution favours brains that generate a useful model of reality, not necessarily an accurate one. An affinity for ritual might better capitalize on the placebo effect, for example. While there is a lot of dispute about the evolutionary adaptive value (if there is any at all) of religion, I think it’s important to make the point that the nature of all human beliefs are fundamentally designed to be instrumental in attaining survival and reproductive success.

Religion is not merely a worldview for people; it is an integral element of their identity that becomes enshrined in moral intuitions about adhering to the codes and practices of one’s tribe. One of the interesting findings of moral psychology has been that moral judgments are made impulsively and intuitively and then later offered rationalizations. We should not be surprised by the hyper-sensitivity religious people exhibit when it comes to criticism of religion, as it is an expected result of our evolved propensity to sanctify and dogmatically defend the social norms we internalize from our tribe. Belief in the religion that one is raised in should probably be conceived of less as a claim about the nature of the universe, and more as a moral claim. If we take the case of racism, it’s fairly obvious that racism was not really an empirical statement about differences between races, but a moral statement of which empirical justifications were later attempted to be produced for. I think it may be instructive to consider that belief in a religion stems primarily from a deep intuitive inclination that belief in that religion is intrinsically good, and that the justifications for the truth of the religion are offered as an after-thought. There is a period in childhood where children are like impressionable sponges that absorb information from peers and authorities, so that they can profit from the discoveries of their ancestors and internalize the norms of their tribe that will allow them to successfully navigate both their social and ecological landscape; the fact that religious indoctrination occurs during this period should be insightful in understanding the type of belief that religiosity is. The religious mentality, like the mentality of tribalism, was not invented by memes, but arises from evolved intuitions - and not just intuitions about the nature of the world around us (though these were certainly instrumental in the formation of religion, as the Wikipedia article on the evolutionary psychology of religion will inform you), but importantly from moral intuitions as well. We all understand that tribalism is not a rational deduction, we should understand that religion is not one either.

While I have sketched a picture of where I think religion fits into the landscape of human psychology, the practical question of what to do about it remains. But before I proceed, I’d like to take a moment to reflect on the empowering nature of the truth as revealed by science. With evolutionary psychology, we can finally develop an accurate understanding of the human condition and begin to grasp the nature of problems that have perennially plagued our species, like violence, warfare, tribalism, and even religion. Armed with knowledge and the hope of advancing human well-being, we can try and apply our learned insights rather than stumbling ignorantly and hopelessly, as our ancestors did for millennia, through circumstances which arose by the force of rationales that no one understood.

Taking religious claims to be more equivalent to “my tribe is the best” or “incest is disgusting” than to statements like “the sun is a thermonuclear furnace” does lead us towards the view that rational debate will only be of limited effectiveness in the battle against religion. The best things we can do are encourage self-refection and critical examination, massage other intuitions (like pointing out the myriad of situations in which religious dogma has stood as an obstacle to compassion), and try and explain religion as a natural phenomenon so that theists must confront the possibility that they are hard-wired for irrationality and credulity. In the countless battles against tribalism throughout human history, the tribal instinct has never been destroyed, but rather it has been modified. Our innate capacity for unity has not been eradicated, it has simply been expanded in a way that encompasses more people so that the reach of our empathy is greater than ever before. But perhaps with religion we can attain an even greater type of victory than that, by raising awareness about evolution and thus the need to question our cognitive predispositions.

Lastly, I want to return to the question of rational debate. Fundamentally I think debate is extremely important, even if it is not the most effective tool in winning over religious hearts and minds (though I do get the sense that it is rather efficacious with respect to convincing fence-sitters to become full-fledged atheists.) Of more importance than atheism’s triumph over religion is the liberal ideal of an open and honest society. By having debates about even the most controversial issues, we evince our dedication to free speech and intellectual progress. One of the most redeeming qualities of liberal societies is that there is nothing held off the table when it comes to critical inquiry and examination. I say it is not only a right, but a duty, for people to try and dismantle falsehoods and render irrationality naked and obvious wherever it is found. Some leftist commentators who are dogmatically dedicated to an over-blown definition of tolerance, like Robert Wright, insist that atheists who call religion on its untenable claims are being arrogant and offensive. But what could be of more value than our commitment to the free exchange of ideas? By refusing to succumb to the temptation to immunize even the most holy and sacred of ideas from criticism, we always leave open the possibility that someone in the future will be able to inform us of our errors. It is in the arena of rationality and the evaluation of competing claims where the truth is advanced and progress is made. As Christopher Hitchens often recites, you cannot have light without heat.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Young Freethought's editors.

So You Want To Be A Scientist?

Any budding scientists over the age of 16? A competition is being run by BBC Radio 4’s excellent science programme Material World. The competition called ‘So you want to be a scientist?’ is, I’m afraid, only open to UK residents, but I highly recommend the podcast to everyone. The material world website states:

It's not just working scientists who have light bulb moments. Anyone, anywhere can have a brainwave that's worth investigating. But most of us never get the chance. This is that chance.

We want to hear your ideas, however practical, whimsical, big or small. We're not hoping to crack nuclear fusion, reverse climate change or discover the Higgs particle.

[...]

Science isn't all about giant leaps and sudden paradigm shifts.

It's mostly the opposite - single steps which contribute to the body of knowledge in a particular field.

Your idea is likely to be on a small scale, perhaps observational in nature, and be based around simple experiments.

It could be focused on exploring some aspect of your local environment or perhaps even put someone else's scientific claims to the test.

Sounds like a good idea to me; a great opportunity for keen amateurs and something many of our readers might be interested in. For more information, visit the Material World website. Good luck to those who enter.

The Banning Of Islam4UK

From tomorrow, the extremist Islamic society Islam4UK will be banned. Alan Johnson, Home Secretary, said it was “not a cause we take lightly”. The group recently sparked media attention with their planned protest in the town of Wotton Bassett, infamous for the processions of hearses that pass through the town from RAF Lyneham.

In reaction to the ban, Islam4UK’s website stated that

It is the duty of all Muslims to rise up and call for the Khilafah wherever they may be.

[...]

When one looks at the terrorism act one can see that the majority of the organisations that have been proscribed under it are Muslim based, in other words, terrorism for the British regime translates as anyone calling for the implementation of the Shari'ah and the liberation of Muslim land.

This call for the new caliphate is one that should disturb the minds of all decent people. The restoration of an oppressive totalitarian regime under sharia is a serious threat to global peace and freethought. Apostasy, the ability to de-convert, or in other words, think for yourself, is commonly punished by Nigerian sharia courts with stoning.

The Archbishop of Canterbury controversially last year, and with plenty of hostile reaction, stated that he felt the implementation of sharia law was inevitable. The archbishop’s website states that

When the question was put to him that: “the application of sharia in certain circumstances – if we want to achieve this cohesion and take seriously peoples’ religion – seems unavoidable?”, he indicated his assent.

The idea that one standard of justice can apply to one set of people and not to the rest, simply because of poor medieval pseudo-ethical belief systems, is simply not how a liberal democracy can function. Everyone is equal before the eyes of the law, regardless of thier beliefs - correct or incorrect. The Archbishop clearly bent too far backwards trying to make moves towards building bridges between communities of different faiths.

The banning of Islam4UK, a branch of Al-Muhajiroun, under the 2006 Terrorism act, though it seems supported across the UK Parliament, has not been well-received by others. Comedian David Mitchell, writing in the Guardian before the announcement, criticized Home Secretary Alan Johnson’s initial support for the ban.

The thing about freedom of speech is that people are allowed to say offensive, indefensible things; that we needn't fear that because we're sure that wiser counsels are more likely to convince. "Let the idiots and bullies speak openly and they will be revealed for what they are!" is the idea. It's a brilliant one and, in confident, educated societies, it almost always works – certainly much more often than any of the alternatives. Why has Alan Johnson lost confidence in this principle?

[...]

We don't have to show the slightest respect for other people's views – just for their right to hold them. Respect, after all, must be earned. It's only freedom of speech that's a right. When someone says something which you find stupid or offensive, you can say something back. You can tell them to fuck off. They don't have to, but they've still been told.

Maybe that's not your idea of utopia – millions of people screaming: "Fuck off" at each other – but it beats banning it, making an opinion against the law.

Unfortunately for Mitchell, in the society advocated by Islam4UK, his pronouncements would get him killed - he would be screaming “fuck off”, but his Islamic counterpart would likely be wielding a weapon. It is the paradox of tolerance – should we grant it to those who would deny it to us? The risk is too great in this case.

Islam4UK leader Anjem Choudary stated on a Sky news interview, defending the memory of innocent victims of the ‘war on terror’ that "you’re talking about a violation of ordinary rights of individuals”. (Unfortunately, this video was uploaded by a supporter of the equally disgusting political party the BNP. It seems that a good deal of the criticism of Islam4UK is coming from the extreme right wing – a lamentable affair) This is coming from the lips of a man who supports “Sheik” Osama Bin Laden and the erection of a law that allows arcane punishments (thieves are liable to amputation), who supports slavery as advocated by sharia and would will the establishment of a tyrannical global Islamic empire.

Threats to civil discourse, democracy and freedom of thought like this should be oppressed at the quickest opportunity since they deny those very same rights to others. A paradox, but one we must be satisfied with.

Bullying In The Church

A news story I’ve just been alerted to is perhaps a simple demonstration that religion does not make you a better person. The workers union Unite has identified ‘a culture of bullying in the established Church’ according to the Times (link here).

You might expect a religious work place, since believers are far better at morality than us atheists and agnostics, to be a pleasant working environment. It appears not. The petty and damaging human characteristics that lead to untold harm for many are present in Churches too.

A frightening example of this are the highly unpleasant events that occurred to the unfortunate Mr. Sharpe. The Times article reads:

Last month Unite called for the resignation of two bishops after claiming that a vicar, Mark Sharpe, had been forced out of his home and job in the Worcester diocese by what the union described as “a culture of neglect and bullying”. His departure with his family came after four years of alleged harassment, during which the family’s pet dog was fatally poisoned, faeces was smeared on his car and his tyres were slashed twice.

Mr. Sharpe was forced into an early retirement due to ill health at age 42.

The Archbishop Of Canterbury, head of the Church of England, had this to say about bullying:

“I have good reason to know from pastoral contacts with people how much of an issue it can be and I wish we were better at that.”

From an institution that must claim moral superiority over non-believers not open to salvation, this simply is not good enough. The Church needs to address the immoral actions of its flocks before condemning the rest of us to their proselytizing.

How Should Freethought Proceed?

There seems to be a concern among people that ‘new atheism’ or ‘the Freethought movement’ is currently being framed in the wrong fashion. In December last year, John Kubinski offered his thoughts on the matter (his essay can be found here). Kubinski focused on the need to alter a kind of memetic paradigm of the religious mind. Here, Eric Stockhausen, also using the concept of memes, advocates a stance taken by Darrel Ray in The God Virus. Hopefully these different approaches will spark readers to take up or disagree with one or both views. If you have a unique idea, why not send it in? Eric Stockhausen:

I study philosophy in my spare time, so before I even knew who the ‘Four Horsemen’ were, I had read and seen lectures of Dr. Dennett. He introduced me to the idea of memes and to Richard Dawkins; inventor of the concept. Though the layperson may not understand Dennett because of the jargon, there is a book by Dr. Darrel Ray called The God Virus: How Religion Infects Our Lives and Culture, which gives a comprehensive view of memetics.

Ray treats religion as a disease which tries to propagate itself by traits it has evolved. These traits include: obsession with people’s sex lives, indoctrinating the young and those in crisis, adapting to the culture and putting itself before the safety and well-being of its host. For more specifics, I highly encourage people to listen to one of Ray’s lectures or book discussions.

Ray also suggests a better approach for the Freethought Movement towards religionists. A kind of grassroots activism. Religionists are infected by the God Virus in such a way that they can no longer think clearly or in their best interests. Displaying antagonism in debate can, for the moderately to seriously infected, strengthen their beliefs. They put on the armour of strong faith so to speak. Because of this, purely arguing against the irrationality of faith is not the most effective promoter of Freethought.

Ray suggests that the following will strengthen the Freethought community: allowing a more open discussion of taboo subjects (i.e. pre-marital sex), becoming an activist (i.e. protecting the separation of church and state), really listening to what religionists have to say (even comments of a theological nature), providing knowledge and tools for freethinking parents to raise their children and to create a community for ‘Recovering Religionists’.

Doing this should promote a positive image of freethinkers. With the examples that Ray presents and the current social trends of the movement, Freethought may soon have the power it deserves in mainstream America and perhaps globally.

Atheism & The Search For Meaning

It is a persistent claim of those who fail to comprehend just how atheists can go on living in such a bleak universe, that their life is devoid of meaning, and thus not worth living. Religion provides meaning. Religion is, in some ways, a vehicle in order to provide to meaning. Religion always offers the chance of something else. After death, there is another life, but that is determined by our actions in this one. Meaning, for the religious mind, consists entirely in appeasing your particular God or gods in order that you get a good deal for the rest of eternity. The moral value present in this kind of life is highly suspect. If the Bible commanded murder (it does in fact, but that’s an aside) believers would be required to do it. The meaning of their life would be to kill. Incidentally, the Bible is interpreted as saying things like ‘do good to others’ and ‘care for your neighbour’ etc. Meaning is dictated, not created. However, it is, unarguably meaning.

But what are atheists to do? There is no one commanding you to refrain from your own nature. Nor is there anyone commanding you to treat others as you would treat yourself. Neither is there any kind of 'spiritual' principle. Life is absent of an external guide. What startles many people is just why, or how, atheists can and do go on, living seemingly happy and fulfilled lives. Perhaps many would believe that they truly cannot. Their rejection of God (or gods) excludes them of any privilege of purpose. The answer the atheist usually gives is this: I create my own meaning.

This idea is most closely identified with the philosophical and literary movement conveniently labelled existentialism. In what will most likely end as the man’s entire legacy, Jean Paul Sartre summed the thought up in three words: ‘being precedes essence’. There are many interpretations and nuisances of Sartre’s work as a whole and of this quote in particular, but the broad meaning of this phrase becomes pretty clear after some thought. Our meaning, or ‘essence’, what the purpose of our lives is, what we must fulfil or carry out, comes after we are born. We're here before we know why. We exist prior to our acknowledgement of this fact. At some point that realisation hits. Albert Camus, when brilliantly championing the absurdist cause in The Myth of Sisyphus, writes this wonderfully poetic description of a similar kind of awakening:

So long as the mind keeps silent in the motionless world of its hopes, everything is reflected and arranged in the unity of its nostalgia. But with its first move this world cracks and tumbles: an infinite number of shimmering fragments is offered to the understanding. We must despair of ever reconstructing the familiar, calm surface which would give us peace of heart.

The religious believer remains in a primitive state. Without thinking, they accept, or are indoctrinated by, the meaning they are given at birth. More concerned and doubtful Christians have solved the problem with a ‘leap of faith’. Camus regards this move as mistaken. The question that concerns him in his essay is that of suicide. Meaning is gone; so why not end my own life? He feels the only proper response to this truth is one of rebellion. Suicide is the equivalent to admitting defeat of a universe devoid of cosmic sanction. Sisyphus was condemned by the gods to push a boulder to the top of a hill, whereupon it would instantly fall to the bottom and Sisyphus would have no choice but to push it back up all over again for eternity. This is a metaphor that Camus struck upon and utilised. A metaphor for life – one of  ultimately meaningless struggle. But, says Camus, ‘one must imagine Sisyphus happy’.

To what extent does atheism necessitate an absurdist or existential outlook? A life without meaning of any kind does seem futile. But why exactly must this meaning come from anywhere other than ourselves or our reason? All individuals do find meaning in their lives somehow; whether they deny it or not; the atheist is no different – except that they must create their own. Atheism does require some form of very basic existential belief. The picture of that school of thought shown in this essay is incomplete and not in any wider context, but it is not out of spirit.

In the words of a even more modern thinker ‘who ties up their life with the ultimate fate of the cosmos?’. When it is put like that, things do become clear. Only the insane or supremely self-elevated would do such a thing. Contemplation and recognition of an indifferent world is not to be shunned, but when making a moral decision, why should it intervene at all?

Cold-heartedness is often attributed to scientific thought. Though I may have given the impression in this essay that I agree with this view, I see it as mistaken. Grand indifference, I find, both exhilarating and liberating. The greatest crime against reason I have so far noticed, is the lack of a particular image around the world. It should be placed in every public place and known to all virtually from birth. The Pale Blue Dot is the ultimate giver of perspective.

And where does meaning fit in on the 0.12 pixels? All over it. But what is truly startling is that, at present, those 0.12 pixels are the only place known where meaning exists in the entire universe. Is that not enough?

The Basic Case Against Supernaturalism

Another essay from 18 year old freethinker: Eric Stockhausen. This time he briefly examines the perils of supernaturalism and naturalism in the preferred alternative.

D’Souza claimed, in a debate against Dan Barker at Harvard, that science has an atheistic agenda or bias. Because of his view that science explains phenomena with natural causes, he rightly concludes that science, on principle, eliminates supernatural causes. The thing is that there is no conclusive evidence that any supernatural agent exists, so D’Souza’s clinging to Catholicism is still unjustified. One commonly used example used show how naturalists could consider a supernatural agent is: if an amputee had his or her missing limb regenerate in thin air, it would merit a supernatural explanation. The fact that naturalists can consider supernatural agents, given evidence, is proof that there is not an atheistic agenda in science.

Some supernatural beliefs are pretty harmless if they are not thought about too seriously, but any type of supernaturalism is dangerous to epistemology. Philosophically, it is possible that a supernatural agent is behind any phenomena. It is also possible that the world started just now. If the world did start just now, I can discount all my memories. That means I must in a single moment relearn to see patterns because I cannot trust my memories. It would be like everything is a photograph, but I cannot tell the differences in depth and direction. Basically, I know nothing and am just experiencing something I do not understand.

The reason I bring this up is because if any supernatural cause is acceptable as an equal alternative then I know nothing about everything. In this scenario, I have a view that sees the universe as almost unreal. Many eastern religious philosophies speak about letting go of the world. In some Hindu sects, that elders are expected to become ascetic and starve to death in the wilderness in order meet their spiritual needs. But how does it aid our understanding of the world?

A naturalistic world view has given us many new inventions and medicines that have increased the well-being of humanity. As shown by Phil Zuckerman in Society Without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us About Contentment; secular, naturalistic society’s are often the most happy and have admirable system of social welfare. So far, naturalism, devoid of any ‘supernatural’ influence, has aided our society. There is no reason to suggest that naturalism will not be a driving force in continual betterment of the human condition.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Young Freethought's editors.